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It's always interesting to read when foreign news papers glorify my country. It's usually around election time. Denmark, like any other country, has its good sides and its not so good sides. You've now heard the good sides, I guess because it supports the view the news paper would like to make. There are some factual errors in this article, like the fact that we don't have minimum wages (we do, but it's negotiated by the unions, not the government), also the base salary (no overtime and weekend benefits included) for a McDonald's worker above 18 is closer to $17 than $22. McDonald's hire people as low as 13 though, whom of course have much lesser salaries. There are many 15-17 year olds in Denmark who works in this sector, where the minimum salary (for a 15 year old) is around $7 an hour. Add to that the fact that Denmark has one of the highest tax rates in the world, and the 15 year old hourly salary is reduced to $4.50 an hour after tax. The VAT in Denmark is 25%, so that's something you'd have to pay extra on more or less everything you buy. Many things in the article are true. But also, many things have been left out in order to paint such a glorious portrait of the Happy Little Kingdom in the north, who fought Nazi's so intently (.. well, a few rebel Danes did, including my grandfather, but certainly not the government). Also, interesting to hear of a McDonald's worker who wanted to buy an apartment for her salary. I think she must live in a more rural area of Denmark, as we often hear stories of how police men and nurses cannot buy an apartment in the bigger cities, due to low salaries. Education is free. True. Does that mean the education is good? Is it getting better or worse each year? Same should be asked about the other social benefits, daycare, hospitals, retirement homes etc. In general, Danes complain quite a bit about the yearly cuts being made to all of these areas. I think there's a main point missing in the article: What is the price for all this? Ever since Denmark closed down we've heard the government putting into law ways to allocate more and more money to more and more areas of society. One of the more extravagant new rules I've heard of must be that of the artist, song writer, or similar, who, for example, have made a painting or a song that they couldn't sell, they would get compensated up to 100% of the artists estimated evaluation, had it not been sold before July. After July, the artist was free to sell it, without having to pay anything back to the government. (I haven't been able to find the article on this to verify it, so I do hope it was maybe just fake). In any case, we hear some numbers in the news here, for the Corona bill, and it certainly is scary. I suspect, in time, articles about Denmark will begin to appear in non-liberal news papers, about all the flaws of Denmark's society and its social-democrat run government. We do love America though, it's one of the favorite travel destinations for Danes traveling outside Europe. Yet the accepted norm here is to blame America for most that is evil. Pollution. Greed. Even multinational corporations, like McDonald's, are seen as evil by many people around here. For that reason, danish news papers often carry stories like the one where McDonald's attracted quite some unwanted publicity, for having payed $0 in taxes in Denmark since 1981. Which incidentally could be one more of the reasons why the price of burgers are relatively low here. Sources: https://www.information.dk/2002/09/store-firmaer-betaler-ing... https://www.reddit.com/r/Denmark/comments/5pbjtc/jeg_arbejde... https://www.legaldesk.dk/artikler/mindsteloen https://dk.neuvoo.com/skatteregner/?iam=&uet_calculate=calcu... |
Please, just find ways of being grateful. It's the good life and you were lucky enough to be born into it.